Strange Currencies
by theatresporter
Summary: While out of town for the week, Grissom receives a call informing him of Sara's disappearence. He must return home and find out what has happened so he may bring her back. NOTE: This is a songfic using every lyric from 'Strange Currencies' by R.E.M.


**Rating**: K+

**Pairing**: GSR

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing and no-one here. Yet. But, mark my words – you will be mine ;)

**Summary**: As part of **bestkeptprivate**'s October Lyric Wheel challenge.

**Lyrics**: 'Strange Currencies' by R.E.M, provided by **aflaminghalo**

**Author's Note**: This is my first fic of any kind. Big thanks to **forensicsgirl** for the painstaking beta (hugs)

* * *

---

Sara went unnoticed for most of her life.

She'd never really been 'the pretty one' - the smart one, sure, and a lot of fun - but she was never that knock-out who men would call their frat-brothers about. And that was the way she liked it.

Which is why, when the first phone call came, she didn't think anything of it.

Grissom had been invited to teach at Berkley for a week. In the few months he and Sara had been together, they'd rarely spent more than two nights apart. But she was afraid things had been a little strained lately, so it was a welcome break. Mostly, though, she knew how much he loved teaching.

"You will be mine," said the voice.

Four words. Then silence.

A click followed and the call ended.

_Grissom_.

They played these games sometimes. Initially the role playing had been part of their cases – working through the crime in order to solve it. But Grissom knew all too well how to get into the mind of a killer, and Sara found it strangely sexy. So they'd brought it into the bedroom. The good doctor was quiet far too often and this raw, powerful persona he brought upon himself was certainly something different.

"_I don't know what you mean to me_" he'd thought those initial few times, "_But I want to turn you on._"

And he did. So now, their relationship being much deeper, his creepy call told her she was missed. It was sweet, in _their_ kind of way.

Smirking in the way she so often did, Sara placed the phone back on the hook and went back to her book.

Three days later, she was gone.

---

Grissom got the call just as he was leaving a lecture.

"Jim," he said. "To what do I owe this—?"

"Have you spoken to Sara?" Brass interrupted, sounding concerned.

"Why, what's happened?"

"Gil, I need to know – have you heard from her at all?"

Avoiding the question. Not a good sign.

Grissom's worries raced a thousand miles a minute. As a scientist, he'd learnt to formulate a clear and concise thought process for each problem that was thrown his way. Unfortunately, it never worked when it came to Sara.

"We haven't spoken since I left. What's going on?"

"You need to come back to Vegas."

There was a click, and Brass was gone.

He thought she'd been mad at him. He thought his week away would give things time to blow over.

"I don't know why you're mean to me" she'd said, before realizing how juvenile it sounded.

They'd had a few too many close calls at the lab. Too many times had they narrowly avoided being pinned as a couple. So Grissom decided to stand back - hopefully throw off the scent a little bit.

Sara didn't understand. "If you won't treat me like your partner, just treat me like the rest of the team. Is that too much to ask?"

The whole 'secret love' thing was giving him a headache.

"I don't know what to do about this," he'd said, a line all too familiar to them. It was almost laughable, really, when they realized it. "When I get back from Berkley we can sort something out," he resolved.

They'd left it with that.

Turning to walk toward the faculty car park, Grissom bumped into one of his students; Amber.

"Doctor Grissom," she stuttered. "I don't mean to bug you, but—"

Stopping, she dissolved into nervous giggles at her choice of verb.

"What is it, Amber?" he asked, eager to get away.

"The others," she started again. "They were wondering if you were still going to take us to the body farm on Saturday?"

"I'm afraid I can't," he said, watching her face fall at the news. "I've been called back to Vegas. I'm sorry."

She attempted to hide her disappointment. "That's okay. You're busy, I understand."

Oh, how she reminded him of Sara.

"I'd better let you get going" she said, attempting a smile. "It was really nice to meet you, Doctor Grissom."

"You too, Amber."

And with that, she was gone.

Brass had warned him about the young women at Berkley. Who would have thought Gil Grissom would be revered like a God in certain circles? But all they did was make him think of Sara – that day they'd first met.

And now he wasn't sure if he'd ever see her again.

---

Grissom unlocked the door and ran inside.

She didn't often stay at his townhouse – usually it was both of them at her place. But this was one place the team wouldn't think to look.

"Sara!" he called, running to the bedroom, hoping she'd be asleep. Maybe she had the flu – being bedridden would explain it. It was strange, wishing sickness upon her, but when his eyes came to rest on the neatly made bed, he thought, "_Anything but this._"

The phone on the nightstand rang. It was Nick. "Grissom, man, I've been tryin' to reach you for hours".

Grissom took his cell phone out of his pocket and noticed that it was off.

"I've been flying, Nick." He turned the cell back on. "Any news on Sara?"

"Warrick and Greg searched her apartment."

He paused a moment, choosing his words carefully.

This was no time for patience. "Nick, what'd they find?"

"It looks like she's been living with someone. Men's clothing, shaving cream…I'm sorry, Grissom."

"That's it?"

Nick stumbled. "Uh, the place was generally undisturbed, no sign of foul play, but…"

"I'll meet you at the lab" he interrupted, and then hung up with a despondent sigh.

---

The rest of the team was gathered in the break room.

"Cath, did you know anything about this guy Sara's been seeing?" Nick asked, still confused by Grissom's non-reaction.

"She never said anything to me."

"I'm telling you guys," Nick persisted. "There's no sign of foul play."

"Apart from her being missing."

"This isn't like Sara," Warrick countered. "She lives for this place."

"She has been kinda weird lately."

"That's just 'cause she's gettin' some."

Greg glared at Warrick. "Well, Fool might be my middle name, but—"

"Wait, what?" Nick interrupted, choking on his burrito. "I thought you said the F stood for Fredrick?"

Greg shifted, embarrassed. "Technically it's Falstaff."

The guys exchanged a look.

"Shakespeare," Catherine explained.

Greg continued, annoyed. "My point is, I'd be foolish not to say that—"

Hodges walked in.

"Found this in her locker," he said, holding up an envelope, which he passed onto Catherine. She accepted it with a gloved hand.

"You will be mine," she read aloud from the card that was inside. "Not exactly what I'd call romantic."

"Sounds more like a predator to me," Nick added.

"Still think there's no sign of foul play?" Greg asked.

Catherine put the card back inside the envelope and passed it to him. "Run it for prints and DNA. If we're lucky he may have licked the seal."

Without a word, Greg took it and sprinted out, nearly bowling Brass over in the process.

"When you asked him to run it…" Brass quipped as he walked into the room, brushing himself off. He then changed his tack. "Catherine, can I have a word?"

She followed him into the hall. Warrick and Nick exchanged a look, and then shot one at Hodges, who stood there awkwardly as Catherine left.

"Since when have you been a CSI?" Nick asked. "Going into Sara's locker…"

"Hey, if Sanders can do it…"

Nick smirked. Warrick stifled a laugh.

"I'm just trying to help," Hodges continued resentfully. "I don't see you two doing anything."

"No, man, you're right," Nick conceded. "So…When Grissom gets in, do you want us to tell him you're ready to transfer to the field?"

"God no!" Hodges reeled, before returning to the lab.

---

Catherine followed Brass into her office and closed the door behind them. He turned to face her, unsure of where to start.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You might want to call your guys off searching for this guy Sara's been seeing."

"Why?" Catherine asked. "He's the most likely suspect."

"He's…been out of town," Brass explained carefully.

"You know who it is?"

"Just trust me on this one," he assured her. "Call them off."

"Jim, if there's something you're not telling me," she warned, before changing her tone. "This is my investigation. I have a right to know if—"

"It's Grissom."

Catherine's eyes widened. "What?" she demanded, much louder than either of them had expected.

Wendy, walking by, peered in, concerned. Brass waved her away.

"How long has this been going on? Why didn't he tell me?"

"Ecklie," Brass explained. "He didn't want to put you in a position where you'd have to lie."

"Well how come _you_ knew?" she asked, a hint of jealousy in her voice.

"It's a long story, Cath."

---

While passing the front desk, Wendy was stopped by a courier.

"Sign your name," he prompted, pushing an envelope in her face.

Confused, she looked around for Judy. "_She must have gone to lunch._"

"Okay," she stumbled, scribbling her signature on the courier's clipboard, taking the envelope.

The courier snatched the clipboard back off her and left.

"Thank you," she called after him, examining the envelope. "_How rude_" she thought.

Grissom walked in.

"Who was that?" he asked. "And where's Judy?"

"I don't know," Wendy responded. "But this is for you."

Handing him the envelope, she paused a moment, confused. "I thought you weren't supposed to be back 'til Sunday?"

"Things change, Wendy. Thank you."

---

As Grissom walked into Catherine's office, he didn't quite get the welcome he was expecting.

"When were you going to tell me?" Catherine demanded.

Grissom looked over to Brass, who nodded in apology.

"We can go over this later," Grissom responded. "Right now we need to figure out what's happened to Sara."

"I thought Greg was running that," Catherine asked, looking at the envelope in Grissom's hands.

"No…This just came," he explained.

The three of them exchanged a look.

Grissom was the first to turn. The other two followed as he rushed down to Hodges' lab, clutching the evidence in his shaking hands.

Sensing the urgency in the air, Hodges moved aside as they entered the room. Grissom gloved up and then carefully cut open the envelope with a small pair of scissors, shaking its contents out onto the table.

A single white card fell out, a single sentence on its back, dotted with a single drop of blood.

'Three liters of your blood, Doctor Grissom, or the girl dies'

"Three liters?" Hodges asked, aghast. "But the human body only holds five and a half. You can't survive on that."

Catherine and Brass stood silently in shock. Grissom thought for a moment.

"You know with love come strange currencies," he deduced. Then, turning to Catherine, "Call Desert Palms. Fill them in and have them prep for this as soon as you can".

She was stunned. "You can't be serious"

"Just do it, Catherine," he ordered. "Hodges, run that card. I want to know where it was made, what it's made of and where that ink is from. Send a sample of the blood down to DNA. Have them compare it to the hairs Greg collected from Sara's apartment."

"Yes, boss," Hodges replied. He got to work as Grissom left.

"Grissom!" Greg called, racing after him down the hall. "Wait up!"

Reluctantly, Grissom halted for a moment, allowing Greg to catch up. "What is it?" he asked.

Greg thrust a cassette at him. "Sara's answering machine."

Grissom looked at him, then at the tape, before taking it and hurrying away, back down the hall. Greg stayed behind, dejected.

---

Play. Stop. Rewind. Pause.

Play. Stop. Pause.

Rewind. Play.

Grissom sat in his office, a cassette player on his desk. Sensing another's presence, he looked up. Brass stood in the doorway.

"How are you doing?"

"Sara always used to stand there."

Brass took a few steps into the room. "What's on the tape?"

Rewind. Play.

"_You will be mine_". Four words, then silence.

"These words – 'You will be mine'" Grissom said, his voice stilted and emotional. "These words…they haunt me, hunt me down, catch in my throat…"

He paused, glancing at the rosary beads on his desk. "Make me pray."

Brass took a seat opposite him. "You don't have to do this, you know. There are other ways."

"I just want her back."

"Who's to say he'll give her back?"

Grissom looked at him. "I'm going to make whatever it takes. Even if that means…" he paused again, struggling for words. Taking a breath, he looked Brass in the eyes.

"I just want her back."

Brass took a moment. "Why your blood?"

"I'm AB negative," Grissom replied. "It's very rare. Worth a lot on medical black-markets."

"Who could know that?"

"I don't know."

---

"He's doing what?" Nick asked, his mouth agape. "I tripped and fell. Did I fall? I must have hit my head. You're yankin' my chain."

"I'm tellin' you, man. It's what I heard." Greg stood at his side, a hand on Nick's shoulder.

"Did he do anything this crazy when I was taken?"

"Walked into a warehouse with a suicide bomber?"

Nick sighed, resigned. "Yeah, I guess."

Warrick walked in, snapping his cell phone shut.

"That was Tina. She's on board and they've got one of their best doctors to perform the procedure."

"How is this going down exactly?"

"Well I'm not sure I understand all of it, but basically they'll hook Grissom up to a bunch of different machines – keep his heart pumping, his brain oxygenated – everything flowing while they remove most of his blood."

"And then what?"

"Then he'll get a transfusion, re-stabilize, and they're done."

"But why can't they just use the other blood from the transfusion – give that as ransom instead?"

Greg piped up, "We have to assume this guy has a sample of Grissom's DNA. He doesn't want to risk it."

"I still think it's crazy."

"It's Sara," Greg sighed, understanding.

He couldn't stay pensive for long, though. There was a loud beep. "The DNA" he whispered to himself, and rushed back off to his old lab, leaving Nick and Warrick behind.

---

Grissom lay quietly on the bed in the operating theatre. Anxious and cold in his hospital gown, he tried to distract himself, waiting for the staff at Desert Palms to gather all the equipment necessary.

"_Masks, caps and gowns,_" he thought. "_Like an anthrax scare on graduation day._"

This whimsical thought was fleeting, though. Watching silently as they scurried about, his mind drifted back to the situation at hand. These words, "You will be mine," all the time. Running through his head.

"_I want to turn you up, figure you out...I want to take you on,_" Grissom said to himself, the perpetrator on his mind.

"Doctor Grissom," said a woman's voice. He looked up. Tina looked down at him with a comforting smile. "We're going to connect the drain to an artery in your right arm. It might hurt a bit, but we need to make sure it's in before we knock you out. Are you clear?"

"What I want to feel," he said in reply. "I want to feel it now. So please, just do it."

This satisfied her, and with that, Tina hooked up the needle.

In the next room, Brass watched from behind a glass wall. His cell phone rang, but it went unanswered. His growing concern for his friend was really beginning to get to him.

A clear, plastic gas mask was placed over Grissom's nose and mouth. His doctor looked down at him, eyes peeking out from above his surgical mask.

"I need you to count backwards from ten,"

Grissom coughed through a laugh. The doctor's eyes crinkled with a smile.

"Perhaps reciting a sonnet would be more your style, Doctor Grissom. Make it rhyme."

Grissom was about to correct the doctor in informing him that sonnets rarely rhymed, when his mind went foggy. The gas was kicking in. Through the haze, he could only look up and smile. A smile which faded as fast as his clarity when he suddenly realized something.

The doctor.

---

The ringing was incessant, and beginning to piss Brass off. Finally, he turned from the glass and answered his phone.

"Sanders, what is it?"

"When I ring you up, call you down…" He calmed himself. "When I call on telephone, you should answer me."

Brass couldn't believe the attitude he was getting.

"_Excuse_ me?"

"I know who's got Sara."

"What?"

"The DNA on the envelope came back. It was a match to a suspect from a double homicide back in '04 - a doctor at Desert Palms. I talked to Warrick – he went to the hospital Christmas Party with Tina last year. The dude still works there."

Brass turned and dashed to find the surgical roster, still clutching his cell phone in one hand. "What about the blood?"

"On the card? It's a match to Sara."

Greg paused for a moment as Brass stayed silent, focused on finding the board.

"Why would he take her?" Greg asked, confused by the whole situation. "Assuming he committed those murders, he got away with it. Why feel the need to exact any sort of revenge?"

Brass stopped running and found what he was looking for. Suddenly all the pieces fell into place.

"His first victim looked exactly like her," he said.

On the board by the scheduled transfusion was his name, in big block letters. 'DR. V. LURIE'.

"Now he's killing Grissom so he can have her all to himself." He shut the phone off and ran.

---

Brass was almost back at the theater when he ran, literally, into Under-Sheriff McKeen. "What on earth…Jim, where's the fire?"

"Vincent Lurie's in there, performing Grissom's transfusion."

"Yeah, so what? I heard he's one of the best doctors they've got"

"We have reason to believe he was the one who abducted Sara Sidle, and right now he could be killing the best CSI you've got."

McKeen looked at him, overwhelmed by what he was hearing. Brass glanced over his shoulder, down the hall to the theater. McKeen followed his train of thought.

"It's a delicate environment in there, Jim. They've got Grissom hooked up to God knows what. One false move and they could kill him."

"Then we have to be careful, don't we?"

Poised stealthily outside the door to the theater, both Brass and McKeen un-holstered their guns, checking everything was clear for them to go in.

A word, a signal, a nod, a little breath, and they pushed the door.

Quietly, Brass crept in, his gun trained on Doctor Lurie. McKeen followed close behind. Much of Grissom's blood had already been drained.

Two liters and counting.

Brass silently pulled Tina aside, and sent her towards the exit door. She was shocked, but, having been familiarized with police proceedings, she understood.

Unaware of what was going on, Doctor Lurie turned to speak with her, and it was then that Brass made his and McKeen's presence known.

"Step away from the patient, Doctor Lurie" Brass ordered, keeping a careful eye on the doctor's hands.

Lurie froze, refusing to move.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Detective."

"That wasn't a request."

"You see, your friend here has already lost too much blood. I leave him now and he dies without my assistance."

"Then fix him."

"I'm afraid I can't do that either."

"You don't want to mess with us, son" McKeen piped up.

"Son?" Lurie laughed. "If only I were that young again."

"Well you certainly won't be getting any older if I have to shoot you," Brass quipped seriously, pushing his gun into Lurie's back.

"Alright," Lurie stammered, frightened into the reality of the situation. "Here is my appeal:"

Brass and McKeen exchanged a look of cynical disbelief.

"I need a chance."

"A chance?" McKeen repeated, baffled by Lurie's attempts at strategy.

"A second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance."

"The only thing you'll be getting is a friendlier cellmate if you don't reverse this procedure immediately,"

Lurie complied.

---

"Why did you do it?" Grissom asked, facing Lurie across the interrogation table for the second time.

It was all quite surreal, being back here.

"Why do you think?" Lurie asked, resigned. He spoke to the table, any trace of motivation eradicated by defeat.

Grissom's proceeding silence prompted him to expand on that. Lurie looked up at him, fixing his gaze.

"It was Debbie."

Grissom stayed silent, and so Lurie continued.

"I couldn't…I couldn't get her out of my head. Whatever I did, I just couldn't," he said, looking over at Brass. "But, earlier in the year, when your detective there was in the hospital, I saw your girlfriend in the corridor. I saw you two together. Do you know how much she looks like Debbie?"

"Yes, I do," Grissom said, quietly.

"I had to have her. I looked at her and just thought, '_I need to take you in and make you mine._' It was like I could have Debbie again. Just to fool myself, to catch myself, to make it real."

He looked at Grissom, his eyes pleading for an ounce of understanding.

"You gave me that second chance."

Grissom stood, taking one, last, silent look of pity and contempt at the doctor.

"I gave you nothing. You had your chance."

Lurie slumped forward, a broken man. Brass took out his cuffs.

"Say, I heard somewhere that love's confined. I'm sure you'll enjoy the confines of your cell."

Turning away, Grissom left the room.

---

Out in the hall, he paused a moment, standing silently in thought. From the observation room, out walked Sara.

Grissom saw her. Giving a slight smile, he welcomed her into his arms. They held each other peacefully for a moment, resting in the resolution of it all.

"Thank you," she said, her head resting slightly on his chest.

He closed his eyes and breathed her in.

"Thank you for being mine."

---

* * *

** THE END**


End file.
